Most writers know that it can be difficult to say goodbye to a character they have written. Below are some musings I engaged in while I was trying to shift my character IRIS. But she haunts me yet, and as Emily Dickinson knew, you don't have to be a house or a room to be haunted.
The First Letter
Dear Iris,
I feel I have come to know you well, in these last years of our relationship. Would you call it a relationship? I would. But I’m not sure how I would describe you. You are more to me than just a character. Are you a ghost? My ghost, my haunting? If you are, then hello, my ghost. And goodbye, because I have written you now, and you will have to leave.
Will I miss you? Yes, I think so. But we have to part, you and I, our time together is done. I wonder how long have you been with me? All my life, perhaps, sitting on my shoulder, like an incubus. Perhaps you were even closer. Maybe you were inside me all along and I just had to write you out.
You are on the page now, there for the world to know. I don’t think you will bother me again. If I could wish you anything Iris, I would wish you peace, because you too have your ghosts, your hauntings. I hope they will leave you now, as you will leave me and that the words that have created ‘Hard Seed’ will put an end to the silence that appears to have cursed you. Maybe you have heard the Mexican proverb ‘They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.’ I have been in you, I think as much as you have been in me. Perhaps there is such a thing as a ghost within a ghost. Jacques Derrida considered himself to be a ghost in the film in which he played himself. ‘Le fantôme, c’est moi,’ he said. The ghost is me.
Farewell Iris. Rest in Peace.
Sincerely,
M.
Thoughts one day in the garden sweeping up dead leaves ~ ‘Dreamers often lie’
Dreams are a feature of my novel, "The Hard Seed". IRIS appears to place great store in their meaning and seems to introduce them in a way that confounds the reader, that raises the question of what is real and what isn’t, what ‘really happened?’ and what was imagined. Perhaps, she herself doesn’t want the responsibility of writing in a fixed and certain way. Maybe, she wants the reader to make up her own mind about much that happens or doesn’t happen, and what better way to do this than through dream sequences.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894) was a contemporary of Freud’s although he died much earlier. It is not known whether he communicated with Freud about his theories, but Stevenson’s ideas resonate with the theories of Freud. Gülçin Yaman observes that Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde exemplifies Freud’s theory of personality (4). Stevenson did write his own manifesto about dreams in ‘A Chapter on Dreams’ which appears at the back of his novella. He must have given great thought to the subject of dreams. Below is a passage from his chapter:
The past is all of one texture—whether feigned or suffered—whether acted out in three dimensions, or only witnessed in that small theatre of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long, after the jets are down, and darkness and sleep reign undisturbed in the remainder of the body. There is no distinction on the face of our experiences; one is vivid indeed, and one dull, and one pleasant, and another agonising to remember; but which of them is what we call true, and which a dream, there is not one hair to prove. (np)
Stevenson writes of ‘speechless midnight fear’ (np) and appears fascinated with the fine line that exists between what is ‘true’ and what is a ‘dream’ raising the question as to how can we or anyone else ever know. He writes lyrically about what he considers the basis of our dreams, ‘our old days and deeds, our old selves, too, and the very world in which these scenes were acted’ which then become ‘an echo in the chambers of the brain . . . Not an hour, not a mood, not a glance of the eye, can we revoke; it is all gone, past conjuring air-painted pictures of the past’ (np).
Shakespeare, of course, was big on dreams. Many of his plays feature dreams: Hamlet, Macbeth and, of course, Midsummer’s Night Dream to name but a few. Romeo from Romeo and Juliet in fact ‘Dremt [sic] a dream tonight’ (I.iv.52-58) and Mercutio told him ‘That dreamers often lie.’ Perhaps this is true. Dreams have no materiality except in the mind of the dreamer, nor do they have any witnesses unless perhaps if the dreamer talks in his sleep or sleepwalks. Nonetheless, no one can ever actually ‘see’ someone else’s dream. Iris constructed her protagonist’s dreams, so in a sense she was witness to them. Perhaps that’s what writers do. They witness the imaginings of the imagined.
The Second Letter
Dear Iris,
I see that I am going to have trouble shifting you. It’s almost as if I dreamt you and then wrote you while I was dreaming. I am reminded of Edgar Allen ‘is all that we see or seem/but a dream within a dream?’
I know when I was writing your novel I spent a great deal of time looking out the window. People probably thought I was day dreaming. In a way, I think I was. Did I dream you, Iris?
Please fade away Iris. You are a burden now. I feel your weight. I am weary of you.
Sincerely,
M.
Dream Journal
Saturday
3:13am. Lavender scent. A woman with long grey hair stands in front of a mirror, her back to me. She turns around and looks at me. Her face is my face. ‘You should have left me alone’ she says.
8:30am. So glad it is Saturday. Staying in bed for a while with coffee, but I am finding this small bedroom so claustrophobic. Iris is still here. It’s almost as if there is something she hasn’t said or is there is something I haven’t said for her? Something that I need to dream for her? Sometimes I feel as if the entire work of fiction is something outside of me. It’s almost as if I wrote a dream while I was dreaming.
The First Letter
Dear Iris,
I feel I have come to know you well, in these last years of our relationship. Would you call it a relationship? I would. But I’m not sure how I would describe you. You are more to me than just a character. Are you a ghost? My ghost, my haunting? If you are, then hello, my ghost. And goodbye, because I have written you now, and you will have to leave.
Will I miss you? Yes, I think so. But we have to part, you and I, our time together is done. I wonder how long have you been with me? All my life, perhaps, sitting on my shoulder, like an incubus. Perhaps you were even closer. Maybe you were inside me all along and I just had to write you out.
You are on the page now, there for the world to know. I don’t think you will bother me again. If I could wish you anything Iris, I would wish you peace, because you too have your ghosts, your hauntings. I hope they will leave you now, as you will leave me and that the words that have created ‘Hard Seed’ will put an end to the silence that appears to have cursed you. Maybe you have heard the Mexican proverb ‘They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.’ I have been in you, I think as much as you have been in me. Perhaps there is such a thing as a ghost within a ghost. Jacques Derrida considered himself to be a ghost in the film in which he played himself. ‘Le fantôme, c’est moi,’ he said. The ghost is me.
Farewell Iris. Rest in Peace.
Sincerely,
M.
Thoughts one day in the garden sweeping up dead leaves ~ ‘Dreamers often lie’
Dreams are a feature of my novel, "The Hard Seed". IRIS appears to place great store in their meaning and seems to introduce them in a way that confounds the reader, that raises the question of what is real and what isn’t, what ‘really happened?’ and what was imagined. Perhaps, she herself doesn’t want the responsibility of writing in a fixed and certain way. Maybe, she wants the reader to make up her own mind about much that happens or doesn’t happen, and what better way to do this than through dream sequences.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894) was a contemporary of Freud’s although he died much earlier. It is not known whether he communicated with Freud about his theories, but Stevenson’s ideas resonate with the theories of Freud. Gülçin Yaman observes that Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde exemplifies Freud’s theory of personality (4). Stevenson did write his own manifesto about dreams in ‘A Chapter on Dreams’ which appears at the back of his novella. He must have given great thought to the subject of dreams. Below is a passage from his chapter:
The past is all of one texture—whether feigned or suffered—whether acted out in three dimensions, or only witnessed in that small theatre of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long, after the jets are down, and darkness and sleep reign undisturbed in the remainder of the body. There is no distinction on the face of our experiences; one is vivid indeed, and one dull, and one pleasant, and another agonising to remember; but which of them is what we call true, and which a dream, there is not one hair to prove. (np)
Stevenson writes of ‘speechless midnight fear’ (np) and appears fascinated with the fine line that exists between what is ‘true’ and what is a ‘dream’ raising the question as to how can we or anyone else ever know. He writes lyrically about what he considers the basis of our dreams, ‘our old days and deeds, our old selves, too, and the very world in which these scenes were acted’ which then become ‘an echo in the chambers of the brain . . . Not an hour, not a mood, not a glance of the eye, can we revoke; it is all gone, past conjuring air-painted pictures of the past’ (np).
Shakespeare, of course, was big on dreams. Many of his plays feature dreams: Hamlet, Macbeth and, of course, Midsummer’s Night Dream to name but a few. Romeo from Romeo and Juliet in fact ‘Dremt [sic] a dream tonight’ (I.iv.52-58) and Mercutio told him ‘That dreamers often lie.’ Perhaps this is true. Dreams have no materiality except in the mind of the dreamer, nor do they have any witnesses unless perhaps if the dreamer talks in his sleep or sleepwalks. Nonetheless, no one can ever actually ‘see’ someone else’s dream. Iris constructed her protagonist’s dreams, so in a sense she was witness to them. Perhaps that’s what writers do. They witness the imaginings of the imagined.
The Second Letter
Dear Iris,
I see that I am going to have trouble shifting you. It’s almost as if I dreamt you and then wrote you while I was dreaming. I am reminded of Edgar Allen ‘is all that we see or seem/but a dream within a dream?’
I know when I was writing your novel I spent a great deal of time looking out the window. People probably thought I was day dreaming. In a way, I think I was. Did I dream you, Iris?
Please fade away Iris. You are a burden now. I feel your weight. I am weary of you.
Sincerely,
M.
Dream Journal
Saturday
3:13am. Lavender scent. A woman with long grey hair stands in front of a mirror, her back to me. She turns around and looks at me. Her face is my face. ‘You should have left me alone’ she says.
8:30am. So glad it is Saturday. Staying in bed for a while with coffee, but I am finding this small bedroom so claustrophobic. Iris is still here. It’s almost as if there is something she hasn’t said or is there is something I haven’t said for her? Something that I need to dream for her? Sometimes I feel as if the entire work of fiction is something outside of me. It’s almost as if I wrote a dream while I was dreaming.
